


A Soft Place to Fall

by valamerys



Category: A Court of Thorns and Roses Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: AU, Elucien - Freeform, F/M, unbearable amounts of angst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-16 12:05:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13053636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valamerys/pseuds/valamerys
Summary: "You", it snarls, a recognizable voice somehow rumbling from that great drooling maw. It heaves above her, a massive, laboring body, animal breath steaming the air between them foully. "Are you the girl that killed the wolf?"Math was never a strong subject of hers, but the calculation is too simple to allow error: if one of them must die for this, their family cannot survive without Feyre.But they can survive without Elain.There is no debate, then, in her hesitation; she pauses to mourn, she pauses to say a silent apology they will never hear, but of course Elain says a very soft, “Yes.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> jesus i cant believe im back here but i CANT LET THIS SHIP GO please note that this will take massive liberties with acotar canon because i've forgotten half of it and do NOT care enough to go back and check and also canon is fake and only a skeleton on which to hang my angsty elucien kissing anyway. this particular chapter is a lot of stuff we just have to get out of the way before we can get to the Good ShitTM so BEAR WITH ME

Elain has gone to fetch wood when the beast comes.

The whole forest shakes as it bounds across the snow, a terrible blur of fur and fangs so fast she doesn’t even have time to scream before it knocks her on her back, the wind leaving her lungs.

_ You _ , it snarls, a recognizable voice somehow rumbling from that great drooling maw. It heaves above her, a massive, laboring body, animal breath steaming the air between them foully.  _ Are you the girl that killed the wolf? _

Elain’s throat convulses on a silent sob of fear. There is no doubt what this is, what has happened. The wolf that Feyre skins inside was no wolf at all, and fae take payment for their own. Elain knows the stories as well as anyone. Math was never a strong subject of Elain’s, but the calculation is too simple to allow error: if one of them must die for this, their family cannot survive without Feyre.

But they can survive without Elain.

There is no debate, then, in her hesitation; she pauses to mourn, she pauses to say a silent apology they will never hear, but of course Elain says a very soft, “Yes.”

The creature rears back with a terrible sound, and Elain lets out a cry waiting for the fatal blow of those awful claws. But it doesn’t come: instead, when she dares crack her eyes open, it’s crouched before her, waiting. It gives the suggestion of an impatient snarl, and so with trembling hands, Elain hoists herself onto the creature’s back and clenches cold fingers into the its fur, mind a terrified blank.

It takes off with a sickening lurch, and Elain has the good sense to look behind her a final fleeting time to see the cabin disappear into the snow.

Time blurs into a cold fog, and she can feel the muscles beneath the fur working, propelling them further than Elain has ever gone and then further still long after the sun has set, through the depths of the black forest until her muscles ache and her vision blurs with exhaustion.

“Wait—” she says into the wind that whips past them, panic crawling into her voice as her hands slacken. “I don’t think I can—” 

The creature slows, and the momentum of stopping is such a jolt that Elain nearly falls. A growl is the last thing she remembers as some kind of merciful darkness overtakes her.

 

***

 

“-- ing  _ joking _ , Tamlin—”

A sharp growl, a close voice. “She passed out on the way here. I don’t see what else I was supposed to do.”

“Any number of things! Enchant her to sleep or something. What did you do, try to run all the way here with her on your back?”

Incriminating silence, followed by a soft swear from the other party.

Elain is very warm, and as she slowly comes into her body, she realizes she's not standing— or lying down. She’s—

“Fucking hell, she’s waking up,” says the other voice. “Put her down before she panics.”

Elain is being  _ held in someone’s arms _ . And she opens her eyes to see a face very close to hers that definitely isn’t human.

A scream wrests its way from her throat before she can even fully comprehend the fact, and she’s uselessly flailing to get away when he awkwardly drops her. Elain crashes to the ground and scrambles immediately for some purchase, some semblance of safety; she throws herself backwards until her back hits a wall, curls in on herself, heart pounding like a rabbit’s as she takes in her captors, panicked. Fae.  _ Fae _ . There are two men in this room and they are most definitely fae. The one who held her is broad, muscular; tanned skin and gleaming gold hair, wearing a tunic out of time and place but clearly immeasurably fine, and a sculpted gold mask.

But it’s the other who catches Elain’s attention and holds it. He’s thinner than the blonde, a taut litheness to his body, like a drawn bowstring, as he crouches, eyes fixed on her. No.  _ Eye _ . He too wears a mask, leather and fashioned like a fox, but from within it she meets the gaze of one eye molten brown and one eye gold— literally metal. Some kind of magic prosthetic. He’s uncanny; beautiful and wrong, with pointed ears and lips so sensuous they can only be some kind of horrible lure to wickedness.

A whimper escapes her lips under their scrutiny.

“Oh,  _ well done _ ,” Fox-mask says scathingly to the other. “She’s petrified.”

The blonde clears his throat awkwardly before addressing her. “Please, we’re not— I—  you’re safe here. We won’t hurt you.”

Elain can do nothing but shake her head vigorously. They intend to kill her, don’t they? For the wolf’s death? And even if they didn’t, they’re fae, fae would murder a human just for fun; she’s as safe in this moment as in a starving wolf’s den. Every twitch of these creatures sends cold waves of terror coursing through her stomach. And what of the monster that she travelled here on the back of?

“Where am I?” Elain chokes out, her throat dry.

“The Spring Court,” the blonde says gruffly. It is perhaps meant to be gentle, but his hands are fisted at his sides. “You’re a ward of the court, now, in exchange for the life of my sentry, the wolf.”

“I—” The words hardly get through to Elain, too addled with terror and confusion and with the look the fox-masked one is giving her, intense and somehow dark. “I don’t understand.”

“A life for a life,” The fox-masked one says, and there is a cutting sharpness to it. “You’ll live out the rest of your days here and be grateful we’re choosing not to kill you.”

He’s still crouching, on her level despite the harsh words. His hair is a gleaming red, brilliant and longer than she’s ever seen a man’s, tied back in a braid. 

“Are you absolutely certain this is the girl that killed Andras,” He asks flatly, glancing up at the other. “She doesn’t look like she could so much as crush a butterfly.”

The blonde’s nostrils flare, the only indication of annoyance. “Lucien—”

“I could pick my teeth with her arms, Tam, it’s hard to believe she fired an arrow into his eye.”

Even through her terror Elain feels a flare of panic. They can’t find out it was Feyre. They  _ can’t. _

“Yes,” She stammers, breathlessly cutting them off. “Yes, it was me. I killed the wolf.”

Those inhuman, mismatched eyes meet hers again, and an electric shiver runs through Elain’s body. His mouth is a hard line, and maybe that magic eye can see through falsehoods, because even with the mask his expression is clear as it settles into certainty: he knows she’s lying.

Elain is afraid to so much as breathe as he rises, still staring hatefully at her.

“There, Lucien,” The blonde says, gesturing at her. “You heard it yourself.”

“So you’re a hunter, are you,” he asks Elain, making no effort to bleach the disdained disbelief from his voice.

Elain steels herself to lie again, gathers every ounce of strength she can muster, which isn’t much. “Yes. My family is very poor and I hunt to help feed us. I— I didn’t know the wolf was a fae, I would never have touched him if I knew. I’m sorry.”

Lucien makes to ask her another question, or perhaps level some cruel remark at her, but a warning growl comes from the other’s chest. “Leave her alone, Lucien.”

There’s an underlying authority to it that Elain doesn’t understand, but it’s enough: Lucien stands, making a prolonged moment of eye contact with the other fae. Something passes between them, and Lucien’s mouth twists sullenly.

“My apologies, lady,” he says when he turns back to her, though there’s still hostility lurking in it. “My name is Lucien, sentry and emissary of Spring,” he sweeps her a mock bow mostly for the purpose of offering her his hand to help her rise from the floor.

There is nothing Elain wants to do less in the world than touch this creature, but offending a faerie by not accepting their hospitality... that, certainly, would be a death sentence. So she places a trembling hand in his and lets him help her stand. She expects him to be cold, for some reason, but his hand is warm and strong in hers.

The blonde inclines his head awkwardly. “I am Tamlin, High Lord of the Spring Court.”

High Lord. Elain has no idea what that means, but she supposes it explains the other following his command. It takes her a moment too long to realize they’re staring at her, waiting for her to reciprocate.

“M-my name is Elain. Elain Archeron.” She dips the saddest curtsey of all time, still unsteady on her legs, still in a foul, ragged old dress. It’s only really noticeable because they room they’re in is exquisite: the foyer of some kind of grand manor, with heavy oak doors and panelling, marble floors, rich rugs, large mirrors. Now that the fear of death is no longer quite so imminent Elain allows herself to take it in, to feel self-conscious about even standing in it.

Lucien’s eyes narrow again. “You have two names?”

Elain blinks. “I… have my first name and my family name.”

“A human tradition,” Tamlin murmurs to his emissary. “I’d almost forgotten.”

Lucien snorts.

“Do… do you not have family names?” Elain asks haltingly. Perhaps they don’t even have family, she realizes afterwards, perhaps fae are born from nature and not from parents.

“I don’t need a second name to remember who I’m related to, no,” Lucien says.

Elain feels very foolish. “Oh.”

Tamlin clears his throat. “We have, um—” Lucien catches his eye, takes over for him.

“Food.” He finishes. “In the dining room.”

Elain is not quite sure this is reality. That she is standing in a faerie manor, discussing food and family names with two fae who act like men, not monsters, even if they are no less terrifying for it.

“Food would be nice,” she manages to say.

They lead her through the mansion, and it becomes apparent that it is not quite so perfect as Elain’s first impression: some doors are boarded over, some shelves collecting dust; there are precious few decorations or knick-knacks to mark character. There is an eerie lifelessnesss to it, a subtle decay making its presence known amongst the grandness and craftsmanship. The food that greets them already prepared on the dining room table, however, is without flaw, so magnificent in the face of Elain’s starvation it’s almost disgusting. The meats drip with decadent glazes, the fruits are sweet and ripe to bursting, even the breads are elegant and crisp, all of it steaming on silver and gold platters that alone would be enough to buy a house back in the village.

The fae eat too, with only a little staring at her as she tentatively and then voraciously devours. She can hear the occasional soft noise of Lucien’s metal eye working across the table and does her best to ignore it as his gaze flickers between her and Tamlin. Elain feels lost, reeling, out of her depth— surely there are so many questions she should ask, surely she should interrogate them more before just accepting this, surely they intend to kill her, but surely they would have done it by now? Or at least have been smoother about lulling her into a false sense of security, if not.

“What are the… conditions,” Elain asks haltingly, putting down her fork between bites. “Of my being here. What am I expected to do?”

Tamlin looks caught off guard, with a drumstick in his hand, and again looks to Lucien. Emissary and general mouthpiece of Spring, it would appear.

“No conditions,” Lucien says smoothly. “You needn’t even stay in the manor or on the property, although if you try to cross the wall we’ll be forced to retrieve you and I’ll be  _ very _ put out about it.”

“Although I can’t guarantee your safety beyond the borders of my home,” Tamlin adds. “There are a great number of creatures in Prythian who would not hesitate to hurt a human. I protect these lands, but if you venture outside them…”

Maybe they  _ are _ lulling her into a false sense of safety. It’s too good to be true.

“You don’t intend to… punish me?” It comes out as sort of a squeak.

Lucien gives a bark of laughter, wineglass in one hand. “Disappointed? I’m sure we have some chains somewhere we could break out if you’re so eager.” Elain’s face goes hot, and he laughs again.

“ _ No _ ,” Tamlin says, casting a warning look at Lucien, “We do not. Life for a life is an old rule of the treaty forged after the war, I am… forced to abide by it, but not to be barbaric within its bounds.”

Something tightens in her chest, then; where relief should be is only tension. She won’t be tortured or killed, but her sisters don’t know that. They don’t know anything. 

But the tracks in the snow… they’ll know she was taken.

“My sisters,” Elain says softly. “They might try to come for me.”

Might is an understatement. Worry roots deep within her to think of Nesta trying to get her back, taking up their woodcutting axe and dragging Feyre deep into the woods, towards the wall.

Tamlin coughs uncomfortably. “They won’t. I cast a glamour on your house; they think you’re visiting a sickly aunt.”

This, too, should be reassuring, but only makes something thick and terrible grow in Elain’s throat. Her sisters won’t come. And she’ll be here.  _ Forever _ .

“Tell me, Elain.” Lucien swirls the wine in his glass, chin propped in his other hand. “Is there anyone else who might come looking for you? Any cute human boys or girls brave enough to cross the wall? Unless your  _ hunting _ simply takes up too much time for romance.” There’s a bite to it, that sneer of his, and Elain wants to rip his mask off to see it properly, stare him and his disdain down.

The strength of the feeling surprises her.

She turns deliberately to Tamlin instead, trying to keep a tremor from her voice. “Is there somewhere I can go to rest?”

“I— yes, you’ll have a room to yourself. I can—” He makes to rise, and Elain flinches away; if he shows her to her room, she’ll be alone with one of them, and that thought is even more terrifying than facing them both at once.

“No,” She says quickly, “You don’t have you— I mean, if you could just. Tell me.”

An awkward pause, and for a moment of suspended terror, Elain realizes that this is it: she’s offended them, and she’s going to die now.

“Of course,” Tamlin demurs, although it’s too late to seem graceful. “Up the stairs to your left, down the first hallway, the door near the window. There should be clothes and other necessities you may use.”

“So that’s a yes, Elain?” Lucien drawls, unwilling to be ignored. “Because if I have to fight a human lover of yours, you should know, I am not likely to lose.”

The tears in Elain’s throat boil over, flooding her eyes as she turns to glare at him.

“ _ No _ .” It comes out rougher than she means it. “No, no one is coming for me. Are you happy?”

He just looks at her, inscrutable from across the table, from within that mask. Elain is struck by how beautiful he is, and the unfairness of it makes her sudden existential loneliness that much worse.

She tries to hold it off as she makes to leave, but a strangled sob escapes from her chest just before the door closes behind her. Their conversation follows her down the hall:

“Well,  _ that _ was an abject disaster.”

“You made her cry, Lucien.”

“And now she likes you better, despite your inability to string more than five words together. You’re welcome.”


	2. Chapter 2

 

It’s perfect. She’s an appropriate age, she’s unattached, she’s, for a human, attractive, somewhere under the dirt and starvation, and even fairly docile, neither rebellious nor overly terrified in any way that isn’t fixable.

It’s much too perfect. She is almost certainly not the person who killed Andras. If Lucien knows anything at all, it’s the cadence of murderers, the way darkness of soul paints itself around the eyes. And this pale, grubby little creature, this _child_ , isn’t halfway good enough of a liar to imitate it, even if her gaze is inexplicably haunting.

But Tamlin won’t listen to reason that night, while the fire dies down.

“Of course it’s unbelievable,” he says darkly, from deep within the wingback armchair. “Amarantha set up the terms to be that way.”

“Alright, then, forget unbelievable, _impossible_ . We know, we _felt it_ , that Andras was killed by a human with ‘hate in their heart.’ That was the stipulation. Does that twig look like she even knows the meaning of the word?” Lucien has been pacing, running his hand back through his hair until his braid is a mess.

“She was terrified today, no thanks to you. I’m sure when we see more of her personality—”

“And what if we don’t, Tam?!” Lucien feels the swift urge to break something, or break everything, until he gets through to his high lord. “We don’t have _time_ to be wrong about this.”

Tamlin says nothing to that, masked face in shadow.

“She mentioned sisters,” Lucien goes on, voice low. “What if she’s lying to protect one of them?”

“I know,” Tamlin says slowly, “That you’re upset about Andras.”

A shame-tinged frustration surges through Lucien, how _dare_ Tamlin write him off as _emotional—_

“But the gods have given us a chance.” Tamlin leans forward enough for the firelight to catch his jaw, illuminate his eyes in the mask. “We have no reason to doubt her, or them.”

And suddenly all the self-righteousness runs out of Lucien at the ghost of abject terror on Tamlin’s face.

This is where Andras should step in, should mediate. Andras who was the peacekeeper, who could soothe Lucien’s temper and Tamlin’s ego at the same time, who knew how to rescue Lucien from spirals of self-loathing and Tamlin from his futile, misplaced furies. For decades now, it has been the three of them in this house, forming a tiny, delicate ecosystem that was very good at pretending they weren’t just waiting for the world to end.

Lucien feels the loss throb like a wound in his chest, the pain equalled by the realization that Tamlin is terrified because he feels _hope_.

Lucien does not feel hope. He would not know where to begin looking for it. That Tamlin could fall in genuine love with the dirty human stranger upstairs, that it alone could save them all from the apocalypse that’s been hunting them for fifty years, feels as patently absurd as the fact that Andras is not coming home.

But Tamlin does not often feel things as fragile or as pure as _hope_ , so Lucien does not have the heart to crush it.

“And here I thought the gods had run out of ways to be cruel to us,” he murmurs, and takes a seat of defeat on the settee next to Tamlin.

“They are eternally creative,” the high lord responds, muted.

Lucien scrubs a hand over his face, exhales. “So…”

Tamlin gives a half-laugh, a relief of the tension between them. “So, what?”

“So you’re really going to… try? To fall in love with a human?” He almost says _with her_ , but that somehow feels too real, too personal, to draw in the actual girl who sat at the dining room table with them. Better to say _a human_ , as though he might mean _any_ human.

The humor evaporates from Tamlin’s face. The mask glints in the firelight.

“I owe it to us to try, don’t I. I owe it to _Andras_ to try.” one of Tamlin’s hands clenches and unclenches unconsciously.“And you’ll help me, won’t you?”

Lucien has not said _no_ to Tamlin since the day he showed up bleeding at the High Lord’s doorstep. He is not sure he’s capable of it anymore.

“Of course. You need it.”

Tamlin laughs. Lucien does not.

 

***

 

As he lies in the darkness later that night, he should by all means be thinking of Andras, but he’s thinking of _her_ instead.

He sees the tears flooding her eyes every time he closes his own, an uncomfortable little prickle of guilt taking up residence somewhere in his abdomen. It doesn’t _matter_ , he tells himself; for all her seeming innocence she either killed Andras or is lying to them to protect his killer. He owes her nothing, not even civility, and even if he did, it’s not as though coddling her would do her any good in this miserable place. Better someone who won’t actually bite demonstrate that fae have teeth. And who knows, maybe if he keeps up the rudeness it will in fact drive her into Tamlin’s waiting arms.

It’s not a thought he likes very much, which is stupid of him, and also he feels the urge to go and check on her, which is _incredibly_ stupid of him. But he absolutely cannot relax without resolving the image of her weird crying human face, so he turns over and around in his sheets for a few more minutes before giving up and getting out of bed.

It must be near two in the morning, and only the vaguest silver glow of moonlight throws the shapes of walls and furniture into relief as he pads down the hall. The manor’s deathly silence is most oppressive in the dark like this, after the faelights illuminating the halls wink out around midnight. Servants used to be responsible for the lighting, but the manor does it on its own now. Along with the food, and basic cleaning, and changing the sheets, and stocking the bathrooms and pantry, and a number of other menial things— it better than any of them has adapted to the isolation of their curse, and taken up magical self-maintenance. Perhaps out of mercy for Lucien personally, as there’s little doubt Tamlin would never stoop to doing any of those things himself.

He arrives at the door by the window in the East wing. The human’s room. He leans in, ear to the crack of the double doors, and stills, listening. The slow, even breathing of sleep is all he can hear, so he lets his hand drift down to the door handle and turn it, quiet as death.

This is a stupid, stupid idea, and he still has no idea why he feels compelled to do it. But the door opens.

The human—Elain, he reminds himself—is on her side in bed, fast asleep and half-consumed by the fluffy bedspread. Even in the dark, it’s obvious she’s bathed: her hair, before ambiguously strawlike and tied back in a haggard bun, spreads out across the pillows in voluminous curls of bronze-gold, and her flushed cheeks are clean. She makes the tiniest noise and shifts, her brow furrowing in her sleep.

Something in Lucien loosens, a knot coming undone.

“Lucien?”

Tamlin’s whisper from the end of the hall makes him start, and he closes the door briskly, with only the tiniest sound as the latch clicks.

“What are you doing?” Tamlin asks, stepping towards him.

“Making sure your future bride isn’t making a late night escape attempt,” Lucien lies. “She was too calm at dinner, I was suspicious.”

Tamlin is looking at him oddly, but he seems to accept it. “Is she?”

“No, she’s right where she should be.”

Tamlin nods, exhaling a long, slow breath. He’s still dressed from the day, Lucien realizes.

“Couldn’t sleep?”

Tamlin gives a vague affirmative. “Been patrolling the halls.”

Lucien has long since accepted that Tamlin’s endless patrols are his way of reclaiming the illusion of control, of safety, as his court slips increasingly from his grip. And, as always, better that than his rages.

“Of course,” Lucien gives a little perfunctory bow. “I’ll excuse myself, let you get on with it. Goodnight, my lord.”

“Goodnight, Lucien.”

Formality is Tamlin’s other coping method, Lucien is fairly certain. Or at least some measure of comfort; he can think of no other reason for the way they bounce back and forth with each other in a way even Andras did not participate in, from equals and friends to a lord and his servant, an amorphous and ever-shifting variable navigated by instinct alone at this point, all other social mores eroded.

When he lies back down, it’s like seeing the human girl sleeping has released him from some spell, and he slips away effortlessly. The howls of a dying wolf echo through his restless dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter but i like to separate em by pov :) just wanted to say that I almost never respond to comments on here as a blanket rule, but i was really touched by all the feedback the first chapter got! I know I disappeared forever so i wasn't expecting to be on anyone's radar coming back. you guys rock, so glad to have company on the HMS elucien <3


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